Disclosure: This page contains affiliate links. If you purchase through our links we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Every price and plan limit below was checked against each vendor’s own pricing page in September 2026, not against other comparison articles.
The short answer
Pipedrive has no free plan. There is a 14-day trial and then it is €14 per seat per month, and that is the honest starting point for this whole comparison — because three of the five alternatives below will run a small team for nothing.
If you want a free CRM that stays free, Zoho CRM gives you three users forever and Attio gives you three seats and 50,000 records. HubSpot is free too, but its free tier caps at two users and 1,000 contacts, which is tighter than most articles admit.
If you are happy to pay but want a lower bill, Freshsales starts at €9 a seat and includes basic workflow automation at that price. Pipedrive does not automate anything until the €39 Growth tier.
And if the pipeline itself is what you like — the drag-and-drop deal view that made Pipedrive popular in the first place — staying is reasonable. Just go in knowing what the add-ons cost, which is the part below that most comparisons skip.
The add-ons are the real Pipedrive price
Pipedrive sells five add-ons on top of the per-seat price, and they are listed on its own pricing page:
- LeadBooster — from €32.50
- Web Visitors — from €41
- Smart Docs — from €32.50
- Projects — from €16
- Campaigns (email marketing) — from €13.33
Do the arithmetic on a realistic setup. A small team on Lite at €14 that also wants email marketing and lead capture pays €14 + €13.33 + €32.50 = €59.83. That is more than the Premium tier at €59 — and Premium does not include those add-ons either. They are extras at every tier, not features you eventually unlock by upgrading.
This is the single biggest gap between Pipedrive’s headline price and what teams actually end up paying, and it is why a €14 CRM can quietly become a €60 one.
Two more things worth knowing before you compare
Automation starts at €39, not €14. Pipedrive’s own plan descriptions are clear about this: Lite is “organize your sales in one simple, intuitive workspace”, and automating emails and follow-ups is what the Growth tier at €39 is for. If workflow automation is why you want a CRM, Pipedrive’s entry price is €39, not €14.
The monthly price is 71% higher. Every figure Pipedrive advertises assumes annual billing. Lite is €14 committed for a year but €24 month to month; Growth is €39 against €49; Premium €59 against €79; Ultimate €79 against €99. Pipedrive’s own page describes the annual saving as “up to 42%”, which is one of the steepest in this category.
The alternatives compared
Prices and plan limits verified at each vendor’s own pricing page, September 2026. All figures are per seat per month.
| CRM | Free plan | Entry price per seat/month | Automation included from | Watch out for | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pipedrive (the baseline) | ✗ None — 14-day trial | €14 annual / €24 monthly | ✗ €39 Growth | ✗ Five paid add-ons on top of the seat price | Sales teams that want a pipeline and nothing else |
| HubSpot | ✓ Free forever | $20 list ($7 promo) | Paid tiers | ✗ Free caps at 2 users and 1,000 contacts | Marketing and sales in one place |
| Zoho CRM | ✓ Free forever, 3 users | €14 Standard | ✓ €23 Professional | Interface is denser than Pipedrive's | Teams already inside Zoho |
| Freshsales | ✗ None — 21-day trial | €9 Growth | ✓ €9 Growth | Branded documents are a €19 add-on | The cheapest real entry price |
| monday CRM | ✗ None — 14-day trial | €12 annual / €18 monthly | ✓ €17 Standard | ✗ Minimum 3 seats; Basic caps 1,000 contacts | Teams already running monday boards |
| Attio | ✓ Free, 3 seats, 50,000 records | €31 annual / €39 monthly | €31 Plus | ✗ Priciest paid entry here | Startups wanting a modern, fast CRM |
Pipedrive, Zoho, Freshsales, monday and Attio all served euro pricing from Europe; HubSpot quoted in dollars. All of these vendors price by region, so check your own currency before comparing exact figures.
1. Zoho CRM — the best free plan that stays free
Free forever for 3 users. Paid from €14 (Standard), automation from €23 (Professional).
Zoho is the most direct answer to Pipedrive’s missing free tier. Three users, no time limit, no card. For a founder and two colleagues that is a working CRM at zero cost, where Pipedrive would be €42 a month for the same three seats.
Paid tiers match Pipedrive at the entry point — both are €14 — but diverge fast above it: Zoho Professional is €23 where Pipedrive Growth is €39, and Zoho Ultimate is €52 against Pipedrive Ultimate at €79. The trade-off is interface density. Zoho does far more, and it looks like it; Pipedrive’s pipeline view is genuinely cleaner to work in every day.
We compared these two directly in Pipedrive vs Zoho CRM.
2. Freshsales — the cheapest real entry price
€9 per seat (Growth), including basic workflows. No free plan — 21-day trial.
At €9 a seat Freshsales undercuts Pipedrive’s entry tier by a third, and the comparison is better than the numbers suggest because of what is included. The Growth plan carries chat, email and phone, email templates, custom fields and basic workflows — automation that Pipedrive reserves for its €39 tier. For a small sales team that wants follow-ups to fire automatically, that is a four-fold difference in entry cost.
It is not add-on free either: branded documents are €19 per user per month and the Freddy AI agent is billed by session. And there is no free plan, so the 21-day trial is your only look before committing.
3. HubSpot — free, with limits worth reading
Free for up to 2 users and 1,000 contacts, no time limit. Starter from $20 a seat (currently $7 on a new-customer promotion).
HubSpot’s free CRM is the best-known answer to “what do I use instead of paying for Pipedrive”, and for a solo operator or a pair it is genuinely good — contact management, email integration, deal tracking, no expiry.
Read the limits before you plan around it, though. HubSpot’s own FAQ is explicit: two users maximum on the free account, and 1,000 contacts. Plenty of comparison articles describe it as free for unlimited users; that is not what HubSpot’s pricing page says. Beyond those caps you are on Starter, and HubSpot’s real strength — marketing automation, sequences, reporting — sits in tiers well above that.
We put these two side by side in HubSpot vs Pipedrive.
4. Attio — the modern option with a real free tier
Free for 3 seats and 50,000 records. Plus from €31 a seat annually, €39 monthly.
Attio is the newest CRM here and the one that feels least like a database with a sales skin on it. Real-time contact syncing and automatic data enrichment are on the free plan, and the 50,000-record free allowance is far more generous than HubSpot’s 1,000 contacts.
The catch is what happens when you outgrow free. Plus is €31 a seat, more than double Pipedrive’s Lite, and Pro is €74 against Pipedrive’s €59 Premium. Attio also meters AI usage in credits on top of seats. It is the best free tier here for a small team and the most expensive paid tier for a growing one.
5. monday CRM — only if you already use monday
€12 a seat annually, €18 monthly (Basic). No free plan, minimum 3 seats.
On headline price monday CRM looks like the cheapest thing here at €12. Two details undo that. There is a three-seat minimum, so the real entry cost is €36 a month whether or not you have three people. And the Basic tier caps at 1,000 active contacts and deals with a single workspace, which is a low ceiling for a working sales pipeline — Standard at €17 is the realistic starting tier.
Its case is the same as Zoho’s: ecosystem. If your team already lives in monday boards, having the CRM in the same place is worth more than a few euros a seat. Coming to it fresh, Freshsales at €9 with no seat minimum is the better value.
What Pipedrive still does better
A page called “alternatives” has an obvious bias, so here is the other side.
The pipeline view. Pipedrive was built around one idea — deals moving through stages, dragged by hand — and a decade later it is still the clearest implementation of it. Zoho does more, HubSpot does more, but neither is as fast to read at a glance. If your team’s daily question is “what is in play and what moves next”, that matters more than a feature matrix suggests.
Adoption. The most common CRM failure is the team not using it. Pipedrive asks less of a salesperson than anything else on this list, and a €39 CRM people update beats a free one they ignore.
500+ integrations and a well-documented API, which matters if the CRM has to sit inside an existing stack.
Try Pipedrive free for 14 days.
How to choose
- How to Integrate HubSpot with Pipedrive — running both instead of choosing
- Three people or fewer, and cost is the issue? Zoho CRM or Attio. Both are free for three, permanently.
- Want automation on the cheapest plan? Freshsales at €9. Pipedrive does not automate below €39.
- Add up the add-ons before you compare anything. Email marketing and lead capture are extras on Pipedrive at every tier — price your actual setup, not the entry plan.
- Never compare annual prices to monthly ones. Pipedrive’s advertised figures assume a year’s commitment and rise by up to 71% without it.
- Already in an ecosystem? Zoho or monday will save you more in integration work than any of these save you in licence fees.
Frequently asked questions
Does Pipedrive have a free plan?
No. Pipedrive offers a 14-day free trial with no card required, after which the cheapest plan is €14 per seat per month on annual billing, or €24 month to month.
What is the best free alternative to Pipedrive?
Zoho CRM for three users free forever, or Attio for three seats and 50,000 records. HubSpot is also free but limited to two users and 1,000 contacts.
Why is my Pipedrive bill higher than the advertised price?
Usually add-ons or billing period. LeadBooster, Web Visitors, Smart Docs, Projects and Campaigns are all charged on top of the seat price, and monthly billing costs up to 71% more than the annual rate Pipedrive advertises.
Can I migrate my Pipedrive data to another CRM?
Yes. Contacts, organisations and deals export to CSV, and every CRM here imports that format. Custom fields, activity history and email threads are the parts that usually need manual work, so run both systems in parallel before you cancel.
The bottom line
Zoho CRM if you want free that stays free and do not mind a busier interface. Freshsales if you will pay but want automation at €9 rather than €39. Attio if you are a small modern team and the free tier covers you. HubSpot if marketing and sales need to live together, with its two-user free cap understood up front. monday CRM only if your team already works in monday.
And Pipedrive if the pipeline view is the thing your team actually uses. It is not the cheapest CRM here and it is not close — but the cheapest CRM is worthless if nobody logs into it, and Pipedrive remains the one salespeople complain about least.
For the other side of these comparisons, see HubSpot vs Pipedrive and Pipedrive vs Zoho CRM.